In a previous post, I mentioned Backbase’s easy to use Ajax IDE for building RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), aka fat clients. They’re not the only game town. TIBCO and Morfik also have Ajax IDEs. No doubt there are others that I haven’t come across yet.

I’d originally signed up as a Morfik developer, however because of their terms of agreement for the alpha version, I decided not to invest my time until they were into beta or beyond. Instead, for the past few days, I’ve been looking into both Backbase and TIBCO General Interface.

Both of them have piqued my interest as far as develop Ajax applications. However, their terms of service are significantly different, as are their methodologies. Backbase has a community edition that is free for community use. TIBCO’s license allows you to build and deploy solutions for public use for free.

On first glance, Backbase seems far easier to develop applications with because of their BXML namespace extension of XML. The RIA GUI components each have their own BXML tag, which makes it easy for some rapid prototyping using raw XML. Or you can use their plugins for Eclipse, Macromedia Dreamweaver, or Microsoft .NET (2003 or 2005) IDEs.

Unfortunately, the Eclipse plugin didn’t function properly. So I tried the Dreamweaver extension, following their instructions for installation. While I could see the BXML code for the sample I had written manually, the design view didn’t show the application I’d set up. This could be due to the way that Backbase code was initially recommended to be installed. Or maybe I’m just missing some simple step. However, being a person with limited time, I’m forced to go with obvious methods.

Fortunately, I was able to use one of the Backbase starter kits and manually change the BXML code to build a fairly nice, complex Ajax fat client for viewing a variety of graphs in. It’s only the interface, without the data bindings, but it took about 5 minutes or so, plus a bit of time for tweaking. Now that’s productivity. I just wish I had a functioning WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) visual way to build Backbase apps. (I’m hoping a bit more research will solve this problem.)

As an alternate, I downloaded the community edition of TIBCO General Interface, an Ajax IDE that works right in your browser. After watching the tutorial videos and skimming some of the docs, I created a completely original but highly complex browser-based interface in only a few minutes.

Once you understand how the TIBCO IDE functions, it’s incredibly easy to design ARIAs (AJAX RIAs). Well, at least the interfaces. While binding an interface’s components to data sources seems functionally easy, there’s a fair bit of flipping back and forth between screens and dialogs to get a functioning ARIA.

There’s also a serious flaw for TIBCO’s IDE: it currently only works in Microsoft IE 6.0+ web browser. They’re apparently working on support for Mozilla-based web browsers, but they’re not there yet.

I’ve only done 5 days of research on the two Ajax IDEs, but they both have strong pros and cons. I doubt I’ll settle on one IDE, as I plan to develop apps for both. And I’ll be showcasing techniques for both in the future. (One Backbase app is in development right now. Some of the code from it will be posted here, once the app is complete.)

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